Night-Blooming
by Omnicat
Summary: The dreams started as September drew to a close, and they were the same every time. Variations on a theme. A woman.


**Title:** Night-Blooming

 **Author:** Omnicat

 **Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge:** Marvel Studios' _Captain America: the First Avenger_ and _Agent Carter_ , season one.

 **Warnings:** Ghosts?

 **Characters & Relationships:** Peggy & some OCs & some OC ghosts

 **Summary:** The dreams started as September drew to a close, and they were the same every time. Variations on a theme. A woman. **/ 1038 words**

 **Author's Note:** Written for rinadoll in the 2018 Trick or Treat Exchange on AO3. Enjoy!

 **II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

 **Night-Blooming**

The dreams started as September drew to a close, and they were the same every time. Variations on a theme.

A woman: her face a forgotten interplay of light and shadows, her hair soft, her skin fragrant. The same woman every night, Peggy thought, though she could have been anyone, her features at once intimately familiar and frustratingly unknowable, like trying to tell one drop of water in a stream from another. In the dreams they would laugh and talk, their words never coalescing into meaning, and pin each other's hair and zip each other's dresses, hands lingering on waists, along newly-straightened hems... tracing the back of a neck, fingertips whispering behind a curtain of hair like a secret...

Most mornings, Peggy woke with her dream-woman's taste in her mouth, her laughter in her ears, the coils of her hair slipping through her fingers like smoke. The warmth of her back fled like an illusion from Peggy's chest and arms and sheets.

Peggy woke bereft and started her days aching for her imaginary loss.

She'd never been much of a dreamer. Sometimes, when she worked too hard, there would be snatches of paperwork, or mysteries being solved, nonsense words and puzzles that only made sense until she opened her eyes. Once in a blue moon, a dream would be a story, always cut short before it could reach a satisfying end. But she'd never quite dreamt like this.

And she'd never frozen in place in the dining hall, or whipped around as if stung, because a busty redhead's perfume or a pretty Chinese girl's giggling seemed to have sprung straight from the woman she saw when she slept.

It was strange. Too strange for homesickness and lingering grief alone to explain. Too strange not to get to the bottom of.

Peggy dreamt of dancing, slow and close, hands clasped and breath mingling, and told the women at the Griffith her dreams were of knitting when she asked if anyone else had any recurring ones. She dreamt of kisses, of gasping breaths and hints of warm, slick, soft tongue and the bright potential of teeth, the taste of wax and the feeling of hands on her cheeks, palms cupping and thumbs brushing, as she looked for ways to fish for the information she wanted without getting kicked out for suspected lesbianism. She asked the name and seller of the redhead's perfume, made small talk about porkchops with the Chinese girl, and came no closer to answering the question of the imaginary woman who painted her nails and sent such delightful chills down her spine as she blew on her fingers to dry them.

She took to turning on the radio the moment she got home, looking for the snatches of song that haunted her. She trawled the public library and the SSR's archives both for clues of something, anything going on. She wrapped her arms around herself and pretended she wasn't too English for silly things like that.

But it wasn't until Miss Fry was called away from the hotel for the weekend and the mice came out to play, girls distracting the replacement receptionist as their friends darted upstairs with boyfriends in tow, curfews ignored and music playing in the lobby, that it happened. Peggy's ears perked, and she instantly lost all interest in her mail.

And from two different benches to her left, two different voices cried out, _"That's it!"_

It was the redhead and the Chinese girl. It was the strangest, most wondrous thing.

Their conversation started out normal – _"Do you know this song?" "I feel like I do, I just don't remember from where." "Me too!"_ – but as Peggy watched from below her eyebrows and behind a strategic shield of unread papers, their demeanor and mannerisms changed dramatically. A blush here, a stutter there. _"I'm Julie, by the way. Julie Weston." "Tina Feng. You're on the third floor, right?"_ Julie bit her lip; Tina latched onto a lock of hair to fuss with. They were infatuated with one another, Peggy realized. Had been long before today, from the looks of it, but neither had had the courage to act on it.

Peggy had the peculiar feeling of being watched and watcher at the same time. As if there were unfamiliar eyes on her and Julie and Tina, but the eyes were also her own, and she almost, _almost_ knew what they knew.

That night, she slept without dreaming for the first time in almost a month. October neared its end as something new began, and morning after morning now, Peggy woke up as alone as she'd gone to bed.

On October 31rd, though, at precisely 11:58 at night, she sat bolt upright in bed, all drowsiness having left her, and looked at her door. Not a glimpse. Not a sound. And yet something drew her from her room and out into the hallway beyond.

Two girls silently walked there, away from her, their backs to her and their hands clasped. There was something familiar and unearthly about them.

Something dreamlike.

" _Oy,"_ Peggy said, unable to raise her voice beyond a whisper.

The girls turned their heads, but did not stop. They were any woman and every woman, and Peggy knew somehow that this was who she had seen and been in her dreams. One put a finger to her lips. Shhh. The other blew Peggy a kiss.

When they reached the end of the hall, they turned the corner fading like moonlight.

As quietly as she could, Peggy returned to bed, tears streaming down her face. _How strange,_ she kept telling herself, _how strange._ But it wasn't strange at all.

And there was no reason, she realized, for her to be lonely and starving for someone to hold any longer. There were real hands in her life too, and faces she did recognize. She could have everything the apparitions from her dreams had had, everything Julie and Tina were making for themselves. Those ghostly girls hadn't let any of them share in their love for no reason.

Peggy wiped her tears and felt almost as though those ghostly arms wrapped around her one last time, saying _you'll be alright_.

Yes, she thought. She would be.


End file.
